I don't think it's fair to claim that that who don't volunteer are virtue signaling slacktivists; they may simply believe the solutions must come from larger institutions than individual action.
It’s mostly because this type of worldview filters everything through the lens of power and when viewed through this context the way to ‘fix’ it is by tipping the scales culturally by not acknowledging the things that may cause a stigma and prevent ‘access’ to resources and jobs.
So it’s probably less about what they believe to be true vs they think it’s not helpful to say it out loud.
In other words, food truck entrepreneurs have been around for decades, so why doesn't the service you imagine exist yet? Because so far no one with the right motivation, i.e., no one with their heart in the right place, has tried what you imagine?
> The Geography of Poverty and Nutrition: Food Deserts and Food Choices Across the United States
> We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24094
https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/AllcottDiamondDube_FoodDe...
Are you saying that the demand just doesn't exist? That people in food deserts just want to be unhealthy because of some unspecified and perhaps unknowable reasons? I don't get it.
(The reason for my earlier mention of bias is because those that haven't understood that usually believe the obstacle to be systemic bias.)
Here's your main issues in those "poor minority neighborhoods" which, having grown up and lived in them, I consider neighborhoods with very low profit, lots of theft, and a high amount of rape/murder:
1. Even they have been trained to be picky about their produce. Unless it's food bank, there's going to be spoilage from them ignoring some percentage of the produce that doesn't meet their standards. The profits of the operation must cover those costs on top of things like the truck and person's paycheck.
2. Like ice cream trucks, the truck will need to be refrigerated to reduce that. Produce is normally stored close to 40 degrees in grocery coolers. I don't know how much this adds to the cost of a truck.
(Note: Both of these issues might be addressed by having people order stuff like Instacart, they go pick good ones at a warehouse with maybe some extra cases of fast movers, and there's a limited window of delivery time in each area.)
3. The big one: the driver might get jacked with the money taken or the vehicle might get stolen/vandalized. The odds go up with the number of gangs present. The local Piggly Wiggly's and Kroger's that closed in Memphis had so much theft that security guards couldn't keep up with it. One had six. I was told some were paying for extra insurance for employees' cars that were stolen or vandalized. Then, there was gang violence with 10-20 on 1 attacks on employees that came out of nowhere. Although pretty common, I've only seen two put on YouTube. (NSFW) Here's an example of what they might face which they won't in any other type of neighborhood (poor or otherwise):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxBIVnjlKos
It stems from a mindset where it's considered fun. I don't know why there's all this speculation about environments causing it given any of them will tell you they just enjoy dominating other people. Example from that or another attack:
https://wreg.com/2014/09/30/young-men-say-kroger-mob-attack-...
So, the person running the food truck was to take on all this risk to their physical and mental health to serve folks in these communities making about no money. Most people who talk about these issues don't volunteer to do that. They usually aren't volunteering even at local food banks or donating fresh produce to them. Yet, they expect businesses to operate nearly at a loss when they can make a profit elsewhere. They also expect other people to take on enormous stress and risk their money/lives to serve people in areas with high theft and violence. I don't think it's a reasonable expectation. Given the theft and attacks like the vid, I don't think avoiding those areas is some kind of discrimination. Self-preservation and maximizing personal happiness/profit will lead to same decision for most folks. That includes minority members that usually move out of the same areas the second their finances or college situation allows.
I expect those communities to do more to get that stuff in check to lower the risk of people supplying them. Responsible folks, cool folks, rebels... all of them should take a stand against thug culture with no apologies for their unnecessary love of violence, esp against locals. Gotta pull them in other directions where they can feel like they're being rebellious or bad without that level of damage being done. Once crime goes down, you'll see more kind, but risk-adverse, folks accept low profit to invest in those areas and help them out. An example of people doing that, even more given the crime, are the Stepherson brothers (Superlo Foods) that took over some areas Piggly Wiggly and Kroger left. Walmart also operates near lots of poor neighborhoods.
https://www.superlofoods.com/about
It was also interesting bias that so much media reported the companies "creating food deserts" in Memphis with barely any treatment of the white family that eliminated several of them. Also, (IIRC) none of the well-off minority members invested in a coop, franchise, non-profit store, etc to serve the areas they came out of. Piles of minority members shop at Costco, Whole Foods, high-end department stores, jewelry stores, etc. Zero coverage of or blame for their apathy in the news. So, I call political posturing (i.e. BS) on all that while pointing out the tiny few that are actually doing something about these problems.
Funniest thing: most folks griping about this try to avoid the same areas and aren't volunteering to deliver high-value goods to them to address any perceived gaps. That's because they think the same things as or aren't much more inclusive than the people they're griping about. Virtue signaling and slacktivism over real activism for the groups they supposedly want to help every day.